I'll Never Leave You Ever Again
by iamstormageddon
Summary: "You died in my arms! I burned your body! How are you still alive?" 11/Master and some 10/Master. Angsty. For OnyxvanGem.


"Doctor!" Amy Pond's sudden scream froze the Doctor in his tracks. Turning around to face his companion, he saw her face, which had a look of fear and shock painted on it.

"What's the trouble, Pond? Did you forget something on Kzalki?" That would be a shame, because Kzalki, the planet that they had visited earlier that day, was inhabited by giant jellyfish that could move just as well in the air as in the water. A few had come close to stinging Amy, and one had left a nasty burn on the back of the Doctor's leg. Fortunately, Time Lords have a high pain tolerance. But nonetheless, the Doctor would not enjoy going back to Kzalki to retrieve one of Amy's belongings that she might have left on the planet.

Amy didn't respond with words; she just shook her head violently and pointed to the whitewashed wall to their right. The Doctor could see wide cracks forming in the wall. At first, the Doctor's hearts stopped. _Are those cracks in time?_ His theory was disproved when he realized that light was not coming through the cracks. He relaxed for a split second until the whole room started to shake, and Amy began shrieking. Bits of plaster were falling from the ceiling and nestling themselves in the Doctor's hair. He deduced that at the rate the walls were deteriorating, there was no time to get out via the only door on the other side of the room, and the TARDIS was parked outside the building when they first entered it, so they would have to make do with the resources they had. "_Get away, Pond!_" hollered the Doctor, and he and Amy sprinted to the nearest corner. The Doctor held her close and shielded her face from the inevitable destructive force coming for them.

Then just like that, all was still, and silence fell for a few moments. Slowly, the Doctor took his hand away from Amy's face and squinted at the wall, which was very, very close to completely crumbling to bits. The air hung stagnant and heavy with anticipation. Then, suddenly, they heard an earsplitting battle cry, the cry of thousands speaking in robotic unison: "_**EXTERMINATE!**__"_

Chunks of plaster catapulted everywhere, and the Doctor's hand almost instantly went back up to guard Amy's face. He pulled her closer to him, all the while mentally beating himself up about not escaping through the door. _We had time, _the Doctor thought, shaming himself, _we had time to get out, and now the Daleks are going to kill us both. _

"_**EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!**_" boomed the Daleks as they advanced upon the Doctor and his faithful companion. "_**THE DOCTOR MUST BE EXTERMINATED!**_" Fear wracked through the Doctor and Amy both, and Amy's tears were absorbed by the sleeve of the Doctor's tweed jacket.

"Doctor," said Amy softly, sniffling, "why…why don't you fight them off?"

"_**EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!**_"

The Doctor sighed and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. "Because I can't fight anymore. I've been running from them for long enough. I'm sorry, Amy, I really am. You didn't even get to tell Rory goodbye. It's all my fault. Blimey, I really messed everything up, didn't I?" The Doctor's laugh that followed was brief, hollow, and extremely forced.

"_**EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!**_"

Before Amy got a chance to reply, a sudden flash of light blinded them, and even the Daleks ceased their advances. Thankfully so, because the Dalek at the front of the charge had just pointed his laser and prepared to fire at the Doctor and Amy.

To everyone's surprise, the TARDIS materialized from the flash a few feet away from the corner. The Doctor immediately jumped up and rushed to the door, Amy hot on his heels. The Daleks were still frozen, as if they were a painted picture. Both Doctor and companion banged on the doors of the TARDIS until they finally opened, and a pair of hands grabbed each of them by the front of their shirts and pulled them inside the police box. The doors snapped shut with a _whoosh, _and both Amy and the Doctor fell to the floor of the time machine.

"Who are you, and what in the name of Rassilon are you doing flying my…" The Doctor's anger dissipated as he looked up into the face of the one who saved them. The Doctor's mouth went slack as he realized who was standing in front of them in a classy black suit and tie with a smug smirk playing on his lips.

"Hello, Doctor," said the Master in his smooth, cool voice, "it's nice to see you again."

"Master," replied the Doctor rigidly as he stood up to stand eye-to-eye with him.

Amy saw the opportunity to leave the two Time Lords alone to talk, so she stood up quickly and walked at top speed out of the console room toward her bedroom.

Once Amy had left, the Master addressed the Doctor once more. "Nice regeneration…though I must say that I liked your last body better."

"That makes no sense."

"What, that your tenth regeneration was better-looking? I can think what I want, you know."

"No, not _that! _The fact that you're _alive! _You died in my arms! _I burned your body!_" Just the mere memory of the moment when he realized he was finally alone brought angry tears to his eyes. "How are you still alive?"

The Master's smirk quickly dissipated. His eyes acquired a melancholy look as he replied without meeting the Doctor's eyes, "That's…that's actually why I wanted to talk to you."

The Doctor was quite taken aback by the Master's sudden change in emotion. "Go on, then."

Taking a deep breath, the Master began talking. "I was shot by my wife."

"I know that. I was there." The gentler tone in the Doctor's voice floated like a lonely cloud throughout the console room.

"After I died, I woke up in a place inside my head. It was a blue room."

"The colour of my TARDIS?"

"Exactly that colour."

The silence hung there for a few seconds, waiting for someone to break it. Finally, the Master continued. "I woke up in said room. Nothing and nobody was in there except me. I was all alone. Then, suddenly, my Dream Lord appeared in front of me."

The Doctor nodded in understanding. He had his own Dream Lord that wreaked havoc on Amy and Rory, not to mention himself.

"My Dream Lord appeared in front of me, and he found it _so _funny that I, the all-powerful, world-dominating Master, had managed to die. 'Did you want to die?' he asked me. 'No,' I told him. So he struck me a deal."

"And that would be?"

"He told me that he would let me live again if he could control the dreams I had every night."

The Doctor was confused. "That seems easy enough. Why the trouble?"

"Sit down, Doctor."

The odd request confused the Doctor even further. "What? Why? Is it…"

"Just sit down." Not wanting to argue further, the Doctor complied, taking a seat in the nearest chair, which happened to be his favourite one because it was quite comfortable and he could spin himself around in it.

The Master looked at the Doctor with pain in his eyes. "So after the deal was made, I woke up beside a raging fire. When I looked up to the top of the blazing pile of rubbish, I saw my own body. Realizing that the current body I was in was an exact reincarnation of my previous one that lay in the bonfire, I realized that the body in the fire was a ghost body, visible only to me. I found safety in an abandoned nearby library, where I stayed for a while. I lived on rationed food from the refrigerator and the pantry, all the while entertaining myself with the hundreds of thousands of books. After about a year and a half, my food ran out and I had read all the books, so I searched for the next abandoned building with food, and this cycle repeated itself endlessly. This is how I spent a good chunk of time during the end of your tenth regeneration and the beginning of your eleventh."

"Wait a minute. What about the dreams?"

The Master's face darkened considerably, and the Doctor braced himself for the worst. "At first, the dreams were normal, standard dreams. But after a few nights, they started to…change."

"How so?"

The Master squeezed his eyes shut, almost as if he thought that if he squeezed hard enough, he would disappear from the pain of reality. "They began to become rather unsettling, but not in the way you would think."

The Doctor was becoming a bit annoyed. "Will you just tell me already? Quit stalling and get to the point."

Finally, the Master snapped. Looking straight at the Doctor with a flash of anger in his glance, he replied sharply, "They were about _you_, alright? They were all about you, every single one of them."

Neither Time Lord moved for about five seconds. The Doctor processed this startling information and proceeded cautiously, "How was I involved in these dreams?"

The Master refused to look at the Doctor as he launched into the next part of the story. "The first one involving you was actually a bit pleasant, at least for me. Both of us were in the sitting room of your TARDIS with Rose Tyler and Donna Noble, with you in your tenth regeneration. They were sitting on one couch, and we were sitting on another couch. Both couches were facing each other, and we were all talking as if we were good friends. Then, somehow, our hands sort of…accidentally touched each other…in the space between us on the couch. But you didn't move your hand. You just smiled slightly to yourself, as if you were trying to make it so that I wouldn't notice you were happy about it. And we stayed like that for the rest of the conversation with Amy and Rory. And at the very end of it, our hands actually intertwined. It was the best dream I've ever had in all my life."

The Doctor was oddly moved by this curious speech.

"The second one was you and me in this room, you in your tenth regeneration. We were fighting about who knows what, and out of the blue, in the middle of our argument, you…" The Master trailed off, clearly too ashamed to finish the sentence.

"What? In the middle of our argument I what?"

The Master wouldn't move for a while, but he finally turned away, buried his face in his hands and replied quietly, "You kissed me. You put your hands on my shoulders and you kissed me."

Now that _definitely _threw the Doctor off. "I…I _kissed _you? Did I hear that right?"

The Master nodded in answer, and the Doctor finally pieced it together.

"Master…do you love me?"

Instead of answering him, the Master started rambling, half to himself and half to the Doctor. "I had to make them stop. The dreams. They became too terrible for you to ever imagine. There was a certain one where we switched places, where you were the one to get shot and you died in my arms. And it was in that dream that I realized how you must have felt when I refused to regenerate for you. It was so frustrating. I kept telling you to regenerate, but you wouldn't. You wouldn't regenerate, and you were willing to leave me alone as the last Time Lord. I even tried to kill myself with my own dagger so I wouldn't have to live without you. I woke up screaming with tears running down my face."

The unanswered question seemed perfectly answered to the Doctor. "Master, it's…"

"And I knew that if I found you, if I knew you were alive and well and thriving, if I could just be with you, then the nightmares would stop. They would finally stop, and I would finally be happy."

"Seems to me that the Dream Lord knew something you didn't."

"…what do you mean?"

The Doctor sighed and repositioned himself in the chair. "Dream Lords are psychic, you know. They play on your worst fears and your greatest desires. Your Dream Lord knew that you were in love with me, whether you were aware of it or not. So he played on that unknown desire and used it to his advantage to torture you."

The Master was about to object, but realized that the Doctor was very correct. "Just…just promise you'll never leave me, Doctor."

The Doctor stood up and opened his arms. The Master reached out and threw his arms around the Doctor's neck. The Doctor returned the hug and patted the Master's back. "I can't promise you that, but I can promise you that you can stay with us for a while. I'll have a guest bedroom made up for you, alright?"

The Master nodded. Both were silent for a few more moments, until the Master whispered quietly through silent tears, "I'll never leave you ever again."


End file.
